A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Cent

by Rybczynski, Witold

  Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California (1865).

  Their first project was Mountain View Cemetery. The trustees had approved the design and planned to dedicate the cemetery in May. Miller laid out the first phase—about twenty acres. The notion of landscaping suitable to an arid climate had absorbed Olmsted. He realized that he could not hope to replicate a conventional rural cemetery. “You must then look to an entirely different way of accomplishing the end in view, and to entirely different measures from those made use of in the East,” he counseled his clients. Instead of attempting picturesque variety in the planting, he identified five tree species that flourished in the arid, windswept Oakland Hills. He was sure that the combination of vertical and horizontal foliage would have the desired effect. “The brooding forms of the coppices and the canopy of the cedars would unite in the expression of a sheltering care extended over the place of the dead, the heaven-pointing spires of the immortal cypress would prompt the consolation of faith,” he wrote in the report that accompanied his plan.

  The plan of the cemetery was original. The hillside site consisted of a flat area flanked by slopes. He placed a perfectly straight, cypress-lined avenue on the level portion. The avenue was divided in three by ronds-points, at the center of which stood monuments and fountains. From each rond-point a curvilinear system of pathways followed the contours of the slopes and led to the burial plots. The plots were surrounded by hedges “to give an appearance of greater seclusion and protection to the graves within the family lots than they would have if directly open to view from the carriage ways.”

  Walking down the central avenue of Mountain View Cemetery today, one can appreciate the wisdom of his solution. The formal allée is a solemn, ceremonial, public gesture that is a fitting contrast to the graceful curved paths that lead to the intensely private individual graves. Unfortunately, the hedgerows were not planted and the beautiful seclusion that Olmsted sought is absent. Nevertheless, his original intention remains. “No place of burial is satisfactory to us,” he wrote, “which does not exhibit, besides evidence of respect paid by individuals and families to the memory of their own dead, evidences also of respect paid by the community of the living to the community of the dead.” What he created at Mountain View was neither a garden nor a park but a city . . . of the dead.

  There were other landscaping projects. He was approached by the trustees of the College of California, who owned a large tract of land in the hills north of Oakland. They wanted an English-style park beside the future campus, but he was skeptical that this could be done. “It is an accursed country with no trees & no turf and it’s a hard job to make sure of any beauty,” he wrote to Vaux. Characteristically, Olmsted proposed to redesign the entire master plan. While the trustees were deliberating, he set Miller to work on smaller jobs. Mills, the president of the Bank of California, asked Olmsted for advice on landscaping a large tract of land on the San Francisco peninsula. This led to a commission from George Howard, a trustee of the Bank who owned a country estate outside San Mateo. Olmsted visited the site and prepared a report and a plan that he sent to Mary with the following instructions:

  I want you to prepare & insert a detail of planting the mounds—substituting what you like for what I have written. You will see I shirked it—partly because not competent partly because I could not remember the names of what I did think best.

  I think myrtles, fuschias & jessamines should be added. Forsythia & roses? On the West side would bananas come in with Magnolias or what? Would oranges or lemons come in before the rocks on the turf—directly in front of the verandah? I want one or two very nice shrubs there—quite distinct, exotic & aristocratic. Revise the whole if you can so much favor me, & then superintend Henry’s copy of it. Let him make two copies & send one as soon as possible.

  Olmsted was more interested in the big picture than in the details and always willing to delegate. It is revealing that in this case Mary was his collaborator. He obviously trusted her judgment. They must have spent much time talking about gardening; his directions are in a kind of shorthand, another sign of the closeness of their marriage.

  “Take an interest in the Howard plan if you can,” he instructed. “Remember there is money in it—a little & a penny earned will buy almost as much . . . as a penny saved.” These commissions were a useful small source of income—and they kept Miller busy—but Olmsted was still not pursuing a career in landscape architecture. He saw business opportunities everywhere. Following Silliman’s advice, he invested in several oil properties. He secured the financial backing of the sympathetic Bank of California and formed his own company to explore for oil. Ralston, the bank’s cashier, was helping to launch a joint-stock company that owned vineyards in the Sonoma Valley. He invited Olmsted to join him. Olmsted’s responsibility was to prepare the prospectus. “I was called upon to advise about the executive organization of a new corporation last week,” he wrote to Godkin, “and sat down and in an hour drew up a complete scheme—wholly original—and did it so easily & satisfactorily to myself & had so much confidence that it would be better than anything else that had been talked about, that the idea has impressed itself upon me that this is my true business.”

  His oil company sank a well near Santa Cruz, did not find oil, and was soon disbanded; the winery raised money but did not prosper. He did not suffer financially in either case. His other schemes were mere shots in the dark. He briefly considered buying a morning newspaper in San Francisco and invited Godkin to come West and help him run it. Godkin thought that this was precisely the type of strenuous activity that his friend should avoid and admonished him: “I don’t think that you are sufficiently conscientious or shrewd about your health.” Olmsted suggested to Bellows that they start a national association of bookbuyers, a sort of book-of-the-month club. That, too, came to nothing.

  • • • •

  On April 9, Palm Sunday, Olmsted attended church. It was exactly three months since he had left Bear Valley. During the service he was attacked by a deep melancholy:

  . . . singing Glory! Hallelujah! with a great congregation and looking at the great flag of victory held over us, though of all with whom I ever had conscious sympathy of hope and prayer for this day I stood alone—and my heart cried back stronger than ever to my poor, sad, unhopeful brother, who alone of all the world, ever really knew me and trusted me for exactly what I was and felt, & tho’ I felt more than ever how thoroughly strangers to my real self everybody here is, and how for any purpose that my heart has had in my past life, completely disabled and dead I am—yet it seemed as if you and some others were singing Glory! Hallelujah! too, & that there might be a capacity of life in my dead bones even yet.

  Olmsted wrote this heartfelt passage that evening in a letter to Frederick Knapp. He poured out his soul to his friend, from whom he had not heard for six months. He felt himself abandoned by his father, Godkin, Vaux—even Knapp—none of whom had mentioned the Mariposa business in their letters. (They were probably embarrassed to allude to such a public failure.) He was alone in a strange city. He missed his family. He had seen Mary only once—she had just returned to Bear Valley after spending a week with him. What weighed most heavily on him, he wrote Knapp, was that he had provided so poorly for her and the children. He had tried—tried hard—to find other sources of income, but he had to admit that he had failed.

  “When Olmsted is blue, the logic of his despondency is crushing and terrible,” George Templeton Strong once wrote in his diary. Strong was perceptive. It seems likely that Olmsted suffered from chronic depression. This lifelong affliction typically manifests itself periodically, and at different intensities. Early symptoms include insomnia and an inability to concentrate, read, and write. That was probably what had happened to him while he was working on Central Park, at the end of his tenure with the Sanitary Commission, and during the previous year in Bear Valley.

  “The great flag of victory” that Olmsted referred to was the fall of Richmond. Lee’s army was i
n retreat and Union victory appeared imminent. In fact, almost exactly at the same time as Olmsted was singing “Glory! Hallelujah!” in San Francisco, Lee was formally surrendering to Grant at Appomattox. The good news buoyed Olmsted’s spirits: “I can hardly contain myself with thanksgiving.” Lincoln’s assassination six days later appalled him. “At any rate the nation lives and is immortal,” he wrote Knapp, “and Slavery is dead. Enough for us.”

  It was now mid-April and Olmsted’s hundred-day deadline was up. He had managed to pay off the Bank of California, but the Estate still owed a considerable sum—$58,000. He did not know what to do; he had run out of ideas. He was dispirited. He also just wanted to get the creditors off his back and wash his hands of the entire Mariposa business. Whatever loyalty he had felt to his employers had gone—they had simply abandoned him. He made a drastic decision and signed over the entire Estate to the principal creditor, Dodge Brothers. The lease would run until the remaining debt was repaid; Dodge Brothers would operate the mines, collect the gold bullion, pay workers, and compensate the other creditors.

  The later investigation of the U.S. commissioner into the affairs of the Mariposa Company characterized the decision to lease the Estate to Dodge as a “stupendous folly.” In his low state of mind Olmsted had made an ill-considered judgment; Dodge Brothers mercilessly exploited the Estate to its own benefit (eventually, the Mariposa Company regained possession). The federal commissioner did not question Olmsted’s integrity, but he advised that he should have retained ownership of the Estate and paid off the debt by selling property and milling equipment at auction. He noted Olmsted’s lack of experience in mining and criticized the wisdom of some of his expensive improvements, but concluded that “the fundamental mistake was in the instructions given to Mr. O. to explore, open up and work as many veins as possible.… The plan of the company’s organization, and the scale of its projected operations, were such as to invite every chance of ruin.”

  But that was hindsight. On April 20 Olmsted finally made his way back to Bear Valley. According to the terms of the agreement, he would no longer be manager, but he would “retain a duty of observation, access to books &c. & control of expenses.” He was allowed to keep his living quarters, furniture, books, and personal effects.

  * * *

  1. Godkin wrote Olmsted describing the trial—“there is a tremendous libel suit going on here between Weed (Thurlow) & Opdyke, from which it plainly appears that one is as great a scoundrel as the other.” But Olmsted did not receive the letter until the end of January.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  A Heavy Sort of Book

  WHATEVER HAPPENED to the Mariposa Company, Olmsted’s tenure at the Estate was over. Even if the company recovered, it could never again afford a ten-thousand-dollar-a-year manager. Yet he did not pack up and leave. He decided to stay at least until the end of September, which would conclude his second year of service. This was partly a question of pride. He was also being practical. If he stayed, he had a slim chance of being paid—he had telegraphed New York with a request for five thousand dollars. The cost of living in Bear Valley was high; Mary had been obliged to let two of the servants go. Still, he was not unhappy to remain even at his own expense. The children were healthy; he and Mary enjoyed their outdoor life. When it got hot, they planned to return to their idyllic summer camp in the mountains. That would give him time to complete the Yosemite report, which was his personal responsibility.

  The long-term future was uncertain. “I wish you could find some commission business in which you and I could engage together,” he wrote Godkin, who was still trying to get “the paper” off the ground. What Olmsted had in mind was something “wherein a little capital would go a good way and be safe.” Alternatively, he thought himself suited to be president of a railroad company, head of a news wire service, or editor of a newspaper. He considered the Foreign Service. “I have had ever since I have been in this burnt country, a real craving for the English climate. Mary has the same and agrees to live on bread and cheese for a year if I will get the consulship to any slushy old town where there are donkeys to let,” he confessed. He was open to almost any career—except landscape architecture. Miller was still in San Francisco working on the cemetery and preparing to survey the College of California site, but Olmsted considered these projects as merely sidelines.

  One thing, at least, was sure. He would leave California. It was not only the arid climate. After three months in San Francisco, he had concluded that without more capital his chances of making his fortune in the West were limited. “There are men of high position who would like to make use of me,” he wrote Godkin, “but it is only because they think that I could get capital for them in New York—get up stock companies, of the Mariposa model, for the development of California property of questionable value, which I wouldn’t if I could.” The inference that Mariposa had been “of questionable value” is unmistakable, although Olmsted could not bring himself to admit that the whole Mariposa affair may have been an outright swindle from the start, as many people in New York—including Godkin—believed.

  The management of the Estate was now firmly in Dodge Brothers’ hands, and Olmsted found himself with free time. In the afternoons the family would ride to the top of Mount Bullion. There, beside a cool spring and with a magnificent view of the Yosemite Valley, they would have tea. The children would play among the spring flowers while he and Mary worked on a garden plot. Mornings found him at his writing desk. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that he was able to write for several hours a day. As long as he slept well and exercised regularly, the symptoms that had plagued him the previous year did not reappear. He sent an annual report to the Company explaining his handling of the Estate’s debts. He also started to record everyday life in Bear Valley. He wrote about the different sorts of people: the Indians who lived on the edge of town, the Chinese and Mexican workers, and the American miners. Here is his description of a particular Kentucky gambler:

  He has a cigar in his mouth, a Colt’s revolver in one pocket, a Geneva watch in another and scores of machines and many hundreds of hands have been employed in preparing his apparel. When freshly and mildly stimulated, he has a very active mind and a ready utterance. It is not unlikely that tomorrow morning, after he has taken a warm bath, his cognac and soda water, coffee and one or two after breakfast drams [I shall] again hear him discoursing, as I did this morning, with indignant eloquence on “the mockery of justice, the debasement of the ermine, the ignorance of law, the degrading of demagogueism, the abominable infidelity by _______!” of a recent decision of a Court with regard to the rights of colored people in public conveyances, reported in a San Francisco newspaper. In twenty minutes he will have made use of words primarily prepared for him by Saxon, Roman, Greek, Sanscrit and I know not what other brains. Then again he will pass under my window humming a hymn of Handel, or I shall find him at the Post Office sitting in an arm chair, made for him in New Hampshire, and reading a novel first written in France, translated in England and printed for him in Boston. He will have been served before the day is over by your work and by mine and by that of thousands of other men, and yet will think of nothing so often or so intensely as the “cursed luck” by which he is served no better. And what will he do for us? Play a game of billiards with you or take a hand at cards if you want amusement, and if he wins money in this or any other way of speculating he will use it “generously.” Within a year by pledging his word to drink no more he induced a poor hard worked widow to become his wife, having been previously the father of several children of different colors for [whose] maintenance or education he has never worked an hour or concerned himself a moment. He is [a] tall and large framed white man of English stock, born in a state of society which he speaks of [as] “the highest reach of civilization.”

  Olmsted lived in California at the beginning of the period that Hollywood would represent—and distort—in the motion-picture western. Nothing is remotely glamorous in his description
of the indolent Kentuckian. This rugged individualist is portrayed as a social parasite and a bigot; in a subsequent passage he is unfavorably compared to the hardworking Chinese, whom he disdains. (Olmsted was dismayed to find racist prejudice extended to Chinese, Mexicans, and Indians.) Yet the gambler is neither a savage nor a rustic. He is what today would be called a consumer—of ideas as well as goods. Olmsted found life in Bear Valley primitive, but he was aware that the American frontier revealed something else, indeed, a curious paradox.

  I was not prepared to find in a region so remote from the great centres of civilization so little of rural or backwoods simplicity. The English speaking people are no more unsophisticated here than in Piccadilly or St. Giles. Even the farmers have more commonly the carriage, style and manners of unfortunate horse jockeys and dissipated market men than of solid, steady and frugal countrymen. Go where you will on the mountains, the hills or the plains, wherever the slightest trail has been formed or the smallest sign of industry—mining, mechanical or agricultural—is to be found, you may also find empty sardine boxes, meat, oyster and fruit cans, wine, ale, olive and sauce bottles, with playing cards and torn leaves of novels, magazines and newspapers, more commonly New York newspapers, but sometimes French, German or English.

  Olmsted titled these notes “A Pioneer Community of the Present Day.” They were part of an ambitious project of long duration. Three years earlier he had written to his father: “I have been for some time accumulating notes and materials for a book.” This was immediately after he had returned from his Sanitary Commission tour of the Midwest with Knapp. During that trip he compiled a lengthy travel diary. In it he documented his experiences in a slovenly hotel in Cincinnati, encounters with passengers on Mississippi steamboats, and vignettes of urban life in St. Louis, Chicago, and Cleveland. These travel diaries were part of a “whole caseful of notes” that included newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and background reading that he had been collecting for several years. During that spring in Bear Valley, he started to put these notes into order.